Intellectual freedom is the right of all people to hold and express opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Intellectual freedom is recognized by the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19, as a basic human right.
The CFE-CFLA/FCAB Canadian Library Challenges Database provides access to challenges libraries have faced to items in their collection, and to displays, programs, room usage, and computer access.
On October 8th, in the middle of Banned Book Week, I had the privilege of seeing the documentary film, The Librarians, and then moderating a panel discussion with the filmmaker Kim A. Snyder and two remarkable women, Courtney Gore and Becky Calzada who are featured in the film.
Having been so widely ridiculed for its first Ministerial Order banning all books with “explicit sexual content” from all school libraries, the Government of Alberta just issued a
Shannon D. M. Moore, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba, is joining the Centre for Free Expression (CFE) Working Group on Schools and Intellectual Freedom.“Shannon’s work both as an academic researcher and as a teacher in the public school system will be a valuable addition to the group which helps guide CFE’s work in defending and promoting intellectual freedom in schools.”
Alberta Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides is responsible for arguably the largest ban of school library books in Canadian history. The first Alberta school board to apply his Ministerial Order has had to ban 226 of currently-held books from all its schools because they contained passages with “explicit sexual content” as defined by the Minister’s Order.
The Government of Alberta embarrassed itself and all Canadians when Education Minister Demetrios Nicholaides issued a directive in July to all Alberta school boards banning from all Alberta school libraries, both elementary and secondary, a wide array of books that met his definition of having any “sexually explicit content” or “non-sexually explicit content” whatsoever.
